Last week Tactical Wire editor Rich Grassi posted some Close Combat Rules of Life

Rule #1: Bullets don’t work!
Rule #2: The offender has the upper hand.
Rule #3: FBI “Law Enforcement Officers Killed” summaries do not mean that we waste time learning to shoot at distance.
Rule #4: Guns are “remote control” weapons.
Rule #5: Up close, guns can be more trouble than they are worth.
Rule #6: Know that you can get injured and accept it.

Check out the article for the details on each rule. (It’s a the bottom of that page.)

In California. Anyway, the other day I was–

WAIT! WHERE?!?

UPDATE: From the comments:

We’re not all do-gooder gun-grabbing assholes out here. Just a lot of us.

From one who is certainly not one of them.

Short version:

In Iowa, a guy pulls a gun on a store clerk. Clerk pulls out his gun. A “face-off” and then the thug flees.

Get the full story at Alphecca.

Are you in fear for your life and the life of your wife?

Murdoc’s answer is: Yes, almost certainly.

In Florida, a masked man invaded one home, left, and then tried to invade another. The second homeowner shot him twice.

“Our homeowner didn’t have an obligation to retreat. He is able to protect his property,” said Lt. James Clark, of the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office. “The questions we’re trying to answer: If he was in fear for his life and the life of his wife. If he was, he would be justified in this shooting.”

Florida’s passage of a Castle Doctrine law has been controversial in some circles. Including, I suspect, the criminal circles.

The shootee has an

extensive criminal history involving drugs, fleeing/eluding law enforcement. He was also investigated for a previous armed robbery.

Here’s the headline: Cell Phone Protects Clerk From Knife Attack in Robbery

Here’s the story:

Joseph Wescott says the phone he slipped into his shirt pocket stopped a knife to his chest when a robbery suspect attacked him at the store in a northern Atlanta suburb. He then reached under the counter for the .40-caliber handgun and shot the man.

Good on the phone. Good on the gun. But while phone-only would have protected against the first attack, was the guy going to stop every attack with his phone? If I’ve got to chose between phone-only and gun-only against an attacker, I’ll take the firepower. That said, carrying both is even better.

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear someone claim that this shows how a phone can protect you from knife attacks. Just make sure they stab you in the battery.

Also, I’m wondering why the robber wasn’t using a gun. We keep hearing about how guns are so easy to get (and I’m not really disagreeing), but if things are so bad, how come the bad guy used a knife and the good guy used a gun? Even if the gun control crowd could wave a magic wand and make all guns disappear forever, it would have left this guy on even terms with the bad guy.

Finally, there’s this:

“That was the first time I had ever fired that gun,” [Wescott] said.

Boys and girls, if you’re going to own a gun, at least take it to the range a couple of times. If you’re going to carry it to protect yourself, take it to the range regularly. I’m glad this turned out to be a story with a happy ending, but what if he would have pulled the gun only to go click?

Maybe a round wasn’t chambered. Maybe he didn’t know how to work the safety, or forgot in the heat of the moment. Maybe it’s just broken.

Take it out. Shoot it. Get used to it. Keep used to it.

A while back I linked to a James Rummel post called Real Men Carry Nylon.

Now Caleb writes Friends don’t let friends carry nylon.

I don’t have anything to add other than I’m not sure that anything in the shooting world seems more dependent on personal preference than holsters.

Uncle points out the post Annie, Drop Your Gun which includes this bit of wisdom:

I lost three friends in gun-related accidents in High School and since graduation. Two were accidental. One was suicide. I grew up in upper middle class suburbia where everyone lived gated existences. There was NO REASON for them to have handguns in the house. None. If gun control existed, I would have three friends alive. PERIOD.

Do I carry a gun in my house? Never. Do I believe in the right to bear arms? Yes. But I believe there should be stricter regulations. I believe that fear is the worst possible reason to carry a weapon and therefor will never understand why so many feel the need to “protect their families,” especially when housed in gated communities in middle-class suburbs, alarms activated.

What are you afraid of? [emphasis in original]

Look! A “yes but” moment!

It’s little tough to get past the quote-marked “protect their families” bit, to be honest. What’s that all about? She not only seems to dismiss the idea that people believe they’re protecting their families, but he she goes on to claim that it’s unnecessary.

Which is interesting because, only three paragraphs above the excerpt I posted she wrote this:

We live in one of the largest cities in the world. Where drive-bys occur blocks from us. Where break-ins happen regularly. Where our own things have been stolen, our cars broken into, our things swiped from our porch. Three years ago, a man carjacked my husband at gun-point, stole his car and left him on the side of the road. He had just left the set of his job for his lunch break. There were dozens of witnesses. Everyone watched in shock.

What are you afraid of? indeed.

So she’s more or less established that families either shouldn’t or can’t be protected, and then there’s this in the comments section:

I do think there is a legitimate need for firearms…for SOME people. For example, we used guns on the farm…but is there a need for us to have a gun in our home now? No. We dont have livestock to defend, we dont have wild animals roaming our suburban street. And as far as Im concerned..there is no other reason to have a gun.

Sounds like protecting familes = bad but protecting livestock = good.

And the statement “we dont have wild animals roaming our suburban street” is quite amazing. We’ve got the wildest of the wild animals roaming our suburban streets. Hell of a lot worse than coyotes.